


Hate the Sin, Loathe the Sinner

by Masu_Trout



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Era, Drinking & Talking, Friendship/Love, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-Cabinet Battle II, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 09:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7042435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Frankly,” Madison admitted, “I never quite know what's going through Hamilton's brain.”</i>
</p>
<p>Madison and Jefferson sit, drink, and have a cheerful chat about the walking irritant that is Alexander Hamilton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hate the Sin, Loathe the Sinner

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know quite what brought this fic on--I just love the thought of these two sitting around together and commiserating while Hamilton is out in the streets singing about government.

“Lafayette,” Jefferson said to no one in particular, “is a goddamn liar.”

Madison looked up from the book he was reading, watched Jefferson stare angrily at his glass of whiskey. “Oh? I thought you liked him.”

“I do! I mean, I _did_.” Jefferson sighed. “Should I start referring to him in the past tense now, or wait until Hamilton's _statement of neutrality_ ”—he spat the words as if they were made of venom—“makes it to the people of France?”

He stood abruptly, slamming his glass down onto his desk, then stalked off to a corner of the room. Back and forth he paced like a beast in a cage, twisting his hands together with barely-contained fury. 

Madison just watched him. Once Jefferson got this way, it was better to sit quiet and let his energy run its course.

Finally he stopped in front of Madison's chair. His gaze flickered back and forth along the wall. 

“Would you like to sit?” Madison asked, gesturing to the chair nearest him. For a moment he thought Jefferson might refuse, but with a long, drawn-out sigh, the man reached over and retrieved his whiskey, then sank down into the seat. Arms thrown out, head tilted back—Madison would never say it out loud, but privately he thought his friend might have picked up a flair for the dramatic during his time spent abroad.

“Do you know what Lafayette said to me when he learned I was returning to America?” Jefferson pitched his voice, coloring it with an imitation of a thick French accent. “ _Ah, my friend, say bonjour to Alexander Hamilton for me! The two of you will become fast friends, I am sure._ Fast friends! As if Hamilton had any idea what friendship meant!”

“Ah,” Madison murmured, trying not to let—bitterness? Sorrow?—show in his voice. He'd known Jefferson was upset with the outcome of the cabinet meeting, but he hadn't realized how much that particular exchange had enraged him.

There was nothing for Madison to be upset by, of course; if anything, he should have sympathy for his friend right now. Jefferson was stuck, helpless, unable to lift a hand to aid the people he'd spent so much time among.

Still. Jefferson had lived half a decade in France, meeting people and seeing sights that Madison, with his cough and his shakiness and his body's stubborn refusal to _work_ , could never hope to imagine. He'd been a prisoner in his own skin ever since he was a child, forced to live his life around places he couldn't visit and things he couldn't do.

It was nothing so petty as envy, he decided. Or if it was, it wasn't Jefferson he was envious of. He was frustrated in the knowledge that his dearest friend had companions far dearer than him, that no matter what he said he could not fill the gap in Jefferson's life that Lafayette had left behind.

“What does he expect?” Jefferson continued, madly animated, gesturing wildly for his audience of one. “That I would just shrug, the way he does, at the thought of leaving our allies to be slaughtered? That I wouldn't take an insult to Lafayette as an insult to myself? The man has no one here to speak for him except me, and Hamilton dares to imply that _he_ has a better knowledge of how Lafayette feels than I.” The next words came out more like a snarl. “At least I'm aware that Lafayette does not want to be _murdered_. The hell does he think he's doing?”

“Frankly,” Madison admitted, “I never quite know what's going through Hamilton's brain.”

That, it seemed, was a universal constant among the people who knew the man.

“You were friends with him, weren't you?” Jefferson glanced over at Madison. “How did you stand him?”

He shrugged. “He's a lot more bearable when he's on your side.” It was only when Madison began to disagree with him that his flaws were illuminated: a willful mind started sounding a lot more like bullheaded stubbornness, prolific writings read like desperate rantings, devotion to the cause suddenly seemed like blind loyalty to rigid ideals. “And anyway, we mostly wrote essays together. I didn't actually have to _talk_ to him all that much.”

Jefferson laughed. It was a light, pleasant sound, the first hint of anything other than anger Madison had heard in the last few hours. “A shame that couldn't continue.”

“You're telling me.”

Madison couldn't stop thinking about Hamilton either; his reasons were far different than Jefferson's, but that same coal of anger, burning slowly but no less red-hot for it, sat in his own chest. He could feel it there, just behind his lungs, searing him through layers of flesh and phlegm. His fury wasn't a holdover from their most recent squabble, though—no, he'd been nursing this particular sore spot for quite a bit longer.

That first cabinet meeting was something that still quickened his pulse to remember; he'd been standing tall at Jefferson's return, proud to show off the Southerners' finally-united front, only for Hamilton to lash out with words like knives. He'd been vicious, completely uncaring of the lingering threads of friendship that Madison had so foolishly assumed still stretched between them, and Madison been completely unprepared for the anger in Hamilton's verbal assault.

It would have been one thing if Hamilton had only gone after him—he was used to digs against his strength and his health, and the only thing new about this particular insult was that it was Hamilton attacking him—but to go after _Jefferson_ … to insult his friend was another thing entirely.

Just remembering it was enough to make him grit his teeth. Luckily, Jefferson was nursing his drink and not paying any particular attention to Madison's face; he would have had trouble explaining his sudden anger.

_Off getting high with the French_ , he'd said, as if Jefferson had been doing nothing but playing games a continent away from them all. As if his contributions hadn't been _important_ , as if anyone else could have handled that fine diplomatic work the way Jefferson had.

Madison snorted. Hamilton, the braggart, thought himself brave just because he'd been at Washington's side during the war—he was like a child clutching at his father's coattails. He didn't understand that the truly important roles were not always the most obvious.

Any man could sit in a trench and swing a bayonet around. It took a far more talented one to handle the delicate matters of wartime diplomacy.

“Are you all right?” Jefferson asked.

Madison blinked, suddenly thrown back into reality, and realized with a jolt that he was clutching the spine of his book so hard that he was in danger of crushing it. He hadn't even realized just how enraged he was.

_If there's one thing we Southerners are good at,_ he thought wryly, _it's holding a grudge._

With a slightly-embarrassed cough, he loosened his hold on the book. After a quick check to make sure he hadn't damaged it, he turned his attention back to his friend.

“I'm fine,” he said. “Just… thinking. My apologies.”

“About Hamilton?”

“Yes.”

“Then no apologies are necessary.” Jefferson snorted. “That's a fitting expression to wear when thinking of him. I'm only surprised I haven't seen it on more people.”

“I think Burr might, were he capable of showing any emotion at all. That poor man gets hit with the worst of Hamilton's eccentricities.” The only man Hamilton spoke to more than Burr was Washington, and their esteemed president was—quite inexplicably—fond of his secretary.

Jefferson laughed, a low, pleasant sound. “Well, perhaps we'll have to have Burr over for a drink sometime, then. Can't say I think much of him”—he raised his mouth over the rim of his glass, silently mouthed _no ambition_ —“but anyone forced to put up with that blowhard deserves a little sympathy.”

Madison smiled in return, less at the prospect of seeing Burr—in his mind, the man's biggest problem was less a lack of ambition and more a complete absence of any sort of personality—and more at the cheer in Jefferson's voice. There was something indescribably pleasant about Jefferson's happiness; it was every bit as contagious as the sicknesses that had plagued him as a child. Madison could never hear that laugh and not feel his own spirits lift in return.

“Well then,” Madison said. He didn't have a drink, so he lifted his book in the air. “A toast seems in order. To all those who have to deal with Hamilton.”

Jefferson smiled brightly as he tapped the rim of his glass against the thick tome's spine. “To all those who have to deal with Hamilton, and to the hope that he fucks himself over quickly so we don't have to deal with him any longer than necessary.”

The two of them settled back into their chairs, Madison opening to his page once more and Jefferson taking another sip of his whiskey. Their was still a hint of simmering anger in the tense lines of Jefferson's face and the way he held his shoulders, but it was softer, muted.

That, more than anything else, left a rich in Madison's stomach; he felt almost as though he'd been drinking alongside his friend. Perhaps he couldn't save Lafayette or do anything really _meaningful_ at all for Jefferson, but at least he could help him smile.

Hamilton was a thorn in both their sides, an unpleasant, stinging pain, but he was a thorn they could start digging at another day. For now, he was content to settle deeper in his chair. There were far worse ways to spend an afternoon in the company of the man he respected above else.

_Even,_ he thought drily as Jefferson stood up to pour himself another glass of whiskey, _if that man is going to be insufferably drunk within the next half-hour._


End file.
